Brother Qown turned back to Janel. “Your eyes are red. Anywhere else in the empire and they would just assume you’re an Ogenra bastard, of House D’Talus. Their wizards specialize in fire. So maybe you’re Blood of Joras too and not a witch by anyone’s standards.” He left out the part where the rest of Quur would still consider her a witch because she was unlicensed—as all women were unlicensed. He’d leave that talk for another day.

“Are you implying she’s of tainted blood?” Sir Baramon had been pulled back into the conversation.

Dorna punched him hard in the shoulder. “Shut it, you. Janel’s mother was a commoner. Maybe Frena was one of them ‘oginrays.’ You don’t know.”

“Ogenra,” Brother Qown corrected.

“Oh, go soak it,” Dorna snapped. “I don’t give a ripe plum how you say the damn word.”

Janel rose to her feet. “All of you. Stay back.”

Dorna took Sir Baramon’s arm and began pulling him away from the town—as if Baramon was a child who didn’t understand not to stray under a merchant cart’s wheels. He looked anguished.

Brother Qown heard water trickling from the ice near Janel as it thawed in a growing circle and rapidly uncovered bodies.

Bodies that animated.

“Oh, Selanol,” Brother Qown prayed. “Count, look!”

Dorna drew back in frightened shock.

“Behind me,” Sir Baramon called out, drawing his sword.

Brother Qown forced himself to remember that Baramon’s sword skills were impressive, whatever his weight.

The count stood her ground. She unsheathed her sword and waited for the demon-possessed dead to find her.

Brother Qown tried to think of anything he could do to help. A blessing might make the demons pause, but not much more. These demons were not physically present. Instead, they were exploiting the halfway state of corpses, worming their way into a puppetlike presence in the land of the living. These demons must have possessed the dead, only to find themselves trapped in the ice.

Qown frowned. The dragon had thwarted the demons’ ability to start a Hellmarch.

Janel swung her sword. A village woman’s head rolled away from its shoulders. A dead man swung at her, and Count Janel ducked to the side and punched it hard enough to dislocate its jaw and stagger it. She then made a mighty overhand cut with her sword, cleaving the corpse from shoulder to groin.

These dead were too frozen to bleed.

“Don’t thaw any more out!” Dorna cried out.

If the count heard her, she didn’t acknowledge it. She stepped forward and swung at another demon.

Then a little girl stepped forward.

The count hesitated.

A flash of motion to Brother Qown’s side caught his attention. He turned to look and realized a chestnut-haired corpse in tattered homespun hadn’t gone to attack Count Janel but had instead moved to flank them.